EY CEO Outlook: From tech to tourism with Alice Mansergh, CEO of Tourism Ireland

[00:00:00.02] Richard Curran: Thanks, Carol. Alice, you're very welcome to the studio. It's been an interesting summer. A bit of dodgy weather around. A lot of people, not too happy about that, but from a tourism perspective. Have we done well? Have we had lots of visitors? Is the industry doing well?

[00:00:14.06] Alice Mansergh: Thanks, Richard. Well, at Tourism Ireland we focus on overseas marketing of the island of Ireland to bring people in and to increase the value across the island. So if we look at the summer and the year to date, let's say the first six months, we've had about €2.7 billion of revenue come in from overseas visitors. And that's just Ireland alone, exclusive of Northern Ireland. You've got about a third of that coming from North America, a third from mainland Europe, close to a quarter from Great Britain, and then about 10% from other areas. And we are seeing growth in both visitors and in revenue. But nonetheless, I would say it's a mixed picture for industry. And that's because for many, the margins are quite thin. The costs of doing business are also going up. And so revenue can be increasing, but you might still be finding it hard to make ends meet, and that is particularly true in food and drinks businesses at the moment, because they tend to be quite labour intensive. So a mixed picture, and we're hoping to keep increasing the revenue that's coming in to support all of those businesses and support the spread across regions and seasons as well, so that we have a nice, healthy, thriving industry.

[00:01:19.36] Richard Curran: It's interesting that the way you put it, that it isn't just about getting the numbers in, because one of the other big stories of the summer abroad was around Barcelona and Venice and this whole idea of overtourism, and we saw even locals squirting water at tourists and restaurants in Barcelona and that kind of thing. You look at it from an Irish perspective and you think, well, we seem to be a long way off that. Is that an opportunity or is it something we should be aware of?

[00:01:45.67] Alice Mansergh: That's a great question. And you're right. Overtourism has been a headline of the summer across other destinations. Take Venice bringing in taxes on visitors, Barcelona, you mentioned the Canary Islands and so on. But if we look at Ireland and our situation here, I'm pleased to say when you survey communities, nine out of ten people say tourism is good for my community and that's a place where we want to stay. You know, that Irish people feel, yeah, I can see the value of visitors coming in and helping to support jobs, helping to support villages island wide. Remember, 70% of the jobs in tourism are outside of Dublin or Belfast on this island. So it really helps support rural communities. But we don't take our position here for granted, and I think it's really important to always keep sustainable development in mind so that you're spreading the visitors island wide where we can. You're driving interest in different places. You don't want that Instagram effect, where a handful of places are the places where everybody takes pictures, and hence more and more and more people pile on to 1 or 2 places while others don't see the benefits. So it is all about keeping it in balance and sustainable growth for the future.

[00:02:56.96] Richard Curran: And it's that concentration of people, and particularly maybe the ones who want the photograph because they've seen that particular photograph from an influencer and they're saying, I want that. And they're a different kind of tourist really, as well, because they're not likely to stay as long. They might actually just dip in and out of somewhere, dip in and out of Ireland even.

[00:03:15.08] Alice Mansergh: Yeah. I mean, when you look at tourist behaviour, visitor behaviour nowadays, you know, up to 70% of people will want to share photographs from their trip with folks back home. And that can work in our favour because we hear again from our overseas consumers that the number one way that they get inspired about a holiday is through friends and family, often because they're sharing on social media. So there's a real positive side to people wanting to share their good experiences. But you're right that we want to avoid it being concentrated on just 1 or 2 places. And so that's why marketing the island of Ireland well, overseas is really important, so that we're inspiring people about all the different hidden gems and inspiring people to spend the overnight in a given region that if you're going to the Cliffs of Moher, for example, you've already learned about the boat trip to the Aran Islands or traditional music in Doolin or the Aillwee Caves, or any number of other reasons why really, you're going to have a better time if you take a slow tourism approach. You stay wherever you can nearby and you travel around. And that will be our philosophy when we're marketing different regions around the island.

[00:04:20.95] Richard Curran: Do you holiday in Ireland? Is it one of the prerequisites of the job that you have to? Is there any pressure there?

[00:04:27.31] Alice Mansergh: Do you know what, that question doesn't bring pressure to me. And maybe the reason why I applied for the job after 19 years in the tech industry is I'm an absolute nerd when it comes to staycations and always have been. So I've holidayed on the island every year of my life, and I even honeymooned in Ireland, which I'm not sure every Irish person could say. We took a VW vintage campervan up what was about to become the Wild Atlantic Way, so I have a really genuine love of all there is to see and do across the island. And now, as a marketer, it's just the biggest privilege in the world to be able to share those stories and those places overseas.

[00:05:04.44] Richard Curran: And the move that you made from your background in tech, and you worked with Google for 19 years. We can talk about that in a moment. But let's just go back to the beginning. In your background, you have an interesting mix of, kind of city and country, urban and rural.

[00:05:17.07] Alice Mansergh: Yeah. That's true. As you can hear from my accent, I certainly spent a lot of time in Dublin when I was growing up. I would have gone to school in Dublin and I live locally in Dun Laoghaire now, not far from where I grew up, but at the same time the family farm was down in Tipperary and so all five kids would have bundled into the car and gone off down to Tipperary every weekend in my childhood and then come back on Sunday night. So lots of memories of walking and fruit picking and digging, potatoes and all the other things that you do over a weekend when you're down on the farm.

[00:05:51.20] Richard Curran: Two totally different worlds.

[00:05:52.31] Alice Mansergh: Two different worlds. I suppose when you grow up with it, it seems like the most natural thing in the world.

[00:05:56.72] Richard Curran: Memories of Tipperary. What sort of sticks out for you as particularly great memories of that countryside or that rural environment?

[00:06:04.10] Alice Mansergh: I think probably fruit picking. Maybe it's the time of year that makes me think of this, because I'm due to go down and help with sloe picking and blackberry picking and all those kinds of things. My mum would have made sloe gin from Sloes on the farm, and then you'd be enjoying that every Christmas round the table. So lots of lovely memories of sticking on the wellies and going out as a family with bags to pick all the fruit, and it's just beautiful being out in the Irish countryside.

[00:06:29.06] Richard Curran: So what kind of shaped you then from an education point of view? Were you very bookish? Were you very into school?

[00:06:35.87] Alice Mansergh: I would say I was bookish, I'm not sure I'd say I was into school. I certainly loved the topics in school, I loved history, I loved English, but I was quite independent and probably a little bit troublesome at times as well, so I would have preferred to sit in the library and read the book myself, for example, then go out and play hockey or any of those other things that you should really be enjoying when you're in secondary school. And that led me on to study English literature in Trinity for a degree. As with any art student, I had no clear picture of what I was going to do when I finished, but I just followed what I was interested in. And when I finished college, I took a year out to again travel a little bit around Ireland and try my hand at writing a novel. And I have to say, Richard, I'm very grateful that that novel was never published.

[00:07:25.96] Richard Curran: Where, did you destroy it or where is it now?

[00:07:27.76] Alice Mansergh: It's gathering dust somewhere, and maybe I'll go back to it with, a distance of time. But I set myself a time frame of I'm going to spend a year travelling around and researching and writing this novel, which was an absolute blast. If you've spent years studying other people's writing, it is lovely to try your hand at the craft yourself.

[00:07:45.34] Richard Curran: Without giving too much away Alice, where was it set? What kind of novel was it?

[00:07:49.09] Alice Mansergh: It was set in Waterford, and I'll probably leave it at that. But yeah, I'd set myself a time frame of, I'm going to spend a year doing this. I had a great time doing it, but I had always said to myself, at the end of the year, I'll then pursue other avenues and get a job. And there was a company that had just announced it was setting up in Dublin called Google, and they were looking for people to, would you believe, manually review ads that were going to show on the search engine? So you have to check for spelling and grammar mistakes. You had to check for links to dodgy porn sites. And that is a true story. That's what the job was. And so I got that kind of editorial role in ad review at Google. And then.

[00:08:33.19] Richard Curran: And at that time when you were starting out, did you have any clear sense of longer term, what you wanted to do, studying English, for example, your dad, many people would know Martin Mansergh, a former politician and a former adviser to the Taoiseach, particularly during the whole peace process period. He would have been seen as a very academic kind of person. Was that an influence in your interest in academia and in books?

[00:08:54.11] Alice Mansergh: I suppose we all as a family would have enjoyed reading. I'm not sure any of the family knew what to make of me applying for a company called Google that they'd never heard of at the time, back in 2004. But, you know, went off and paved my own way. And I think the link was advertising and marketing is very close to communications and writing in some ways. And so spent a very happy 19 years at Google working all over the world, and ultimately ended up running the advertising business for Google, for the UK and Ireland out of Dublin, which is worth billions of dollars. And so it was a big team and a big responsibility. By the time that, I was thinking about what might be next.

[00:09:34.97] Richard Curran: What was Google like starting off at that time? This would have been what, 2004?

[00:09:39.47] Alice Mansergh: 2004. There was no permanent office in Dublin yet we were in a sort of shared office building and as I said, the job I think most graduates now would consider not particularly glamorous that you're reviewing thousands of text ads for spelling and grammar mistakes at an entry level. But there was something intriguing about the internet. You know, I really enjoyed not only the editorial side of it, but also seeing all the emerging business models that were coming to the fore on the internet. And, you know, if you take travel as an example, back in 2004, most people were booking their holidays by picking up a brochure and then going into a bricks and mortar business and talking to a travel agent and booking their holiday. But you could see these new websites popping up where people could move beyond a package holiday. They could, if they wanted to research their own itineraries, they could use a booking website. And then, you know, over the years that transferred into being your booking now mostly on your mobile phone. And we're now going even beyond the social media or digital era into the AI era. So even from the start in 2004, there was something about this emerging world of the internet how people were.

[00:10:48.99] Richard Curran: Was completely new territory, really.

[00:10:51.51] Alice Mansergh: New territory and beyond the communication side, the commercial side of how these business models worked and how people were making money in entirely new ways, was quite intriguing.

[00:11:00.21] Richard Curran: And at that time, 2004 as well. It's interesting because a few years earlier, there would have been the dotcom boom when people were supposed to really start using online as consumers, but the infrastructure wasn't there. Things got overvalued. But really with Google and with 2004, this was the sort of second run at it where the infrastructure was there. And it did work. And it hasn't looked back since.

[00:11:22.56] Alice Mansergh: Exactly. And I think for consumers, it democratised a lot of things, you know. So it's funny sometimes if you think about the internet disparagingly, you can think, well, it's all about people watching cat videos. But actually, if you really think about the impact it had, anybody, anywhere across the world now can have the same level of access to academic papers or research as a Harvard academic would have. That's transformational.

[00:11:46.64] Richard Curran: They might choose the cat videos but they can have the other stuff.

[00:11:49.49] Alice Mansergh: That is basically the paradox of the internet in a nutshell, Richard. And then, as I said, all these new business models where rather than feeling like, well, I'm going to have to be in a city centre and have footfall and there's huge capital costs to setting up a business. You've got people setting up websites, setting up new business models and being able to attract people from anywhere around the world to buy from them or work with them. So it really was an interesting revolution.

[00:12:14.24] Richard Curran: So Google was an expanding company, whole new territory, its role in marketing and sort of reinventing the whole world of advertising, marketing and for consumers and e-commerce as well. You were then given responsibility to manage other people. How quickly did that happen, and was it something that you took to naturally, or was it a bit of a challenge?

[00:12:36.02] Alice Mansergh: Well, that's a story in and of itself, because as often happens when a company is expanding very rapidly, you probably step into responsibility with not all of the training or support structures that, say, a more mature company would put in place. And there can be pros and cons to that, but it's certainly an adventure. So in my case, there was a need for support for a new team that we were setting up in Hyderabad, India that was going to be working on customer support. Something had happened with the previous manager and there was an urgency. And so I was asked, would you just hop out to India for the next little while and manage the team? And I had no people management experience whatsoever

[00:13:17.11] Richard Curran: Just to have a look.

[00:13:18.88] Alice Mansergh: Just to have a look.

[00:13:19.42] Richard Curran: A Casual thing.

[00:13:20.08] Alice Mansergh: So no people management experience whatsoever. And there were 68 people on that team growing to 80 by the time I left. And I was there working in a totally different culture. But it was a wonderful experience and it taught me a lot because I was thrown in the deep end that, you know you need to meet people where they are, understand what each person's motivator is, and then try and bring to everybody, okay, here's what I think we can do together but first you need to listen. And perhaps being immersed in a completely different culture taught me that because I went in thinking, well, I don't know it all, and I need to ask everybody where they're at first and then bring everyone together. And that sort of stuck with me, I would say since then.

[00:14:01.42] Richard Curran: And what equipped you for that? Do you think that was just something in your personality? Was that something in your life experience that you weren't going to presume things the very first day that you were put in charge of other people, and it happens to be 60 people, that this was the way you would approach it.

[00:14:15.79] Alice Mansergh: I don't know, I mean, I think to give credit to Google, there certainly was a philosophy of if you invest in your people, you'll get it back in bucketloads. So a lot of the common memes that you hear about Google, where, well, you know, you've got ping pong tables or you've got beanbags lying around the place. I mean, honestly, everybody's very committed and focused and not sitting in a beanbag or playing table tennis all day. But the reason that there are those bits and pieces is there was a philosophy from the beginning of let's try and make this an enjoyable work environment, and that will bring out the best in people. And so probably over my years there, say the 2 or 3 years I was at Google prior to heading over to India, I'd absorbed some of that philosophy. And I suppose my interest in understanding people and situations going back to the past in literature, the two of those combined to make me feel it's really important to understand what the story is, quite literally with people before you start putting together the narrative on where we're going.

[00:15:14.81] Richard Curran: Did you enjoy India?

[00:15:15.83] Alice Mansergh: Loved it. By the end of six months, so that, the plan had always been while I was there that I would hire my successor to be from India, from Hyderabad, to be with the team for the long term. But I must say I was very conflicted leaving. I could have stayed another few years. It was a wonderful experience.

[00:15:33.79] Richard Curran: Did you go straight from India to London because you were in London for five years? Was it?

[00:15:37.18] Alice Mansergh: Yes, I was in London for five years, so I came back to Dublin for a little while. But yeah, the next big role was heading up marketing for a new product that had just launched called Google Chrome. And now that's very well known but at the time it was a challenger brand. Everybody used Internet Explorer. When you ask people what a browser was, they would say, it's the internet. I just click on the big blue E, but there was a philosophy of trying to make the internet faster so that people could enjoy doing more on it. And that's where Chrome came in and.

[00:16:08.62] Richard Curran: And developed the verb to Google.

[00:16:10.66] Alice Mansergh: To Google. Yeah. And at the time, Sundar Pichai, who's now the CEO at Google, was the product manager for Chrome. So I got to work closely with him as well, figuring out how, are we going to market this from 0% share. And it was, again, a wonderful experience and my first time really leading a large-scale marketing team with investment behind it across all different channels, TV, out of home, as well as online to try and really break through for Chrome. And by the time that I moved on from that role, it had become the biggest browser, the most used browser in Europe, Middle East and Africa. So it was quite a journey.

[00:16:49.32] Richard Curran: So after all of that promotion and responsibility and travel, you decided after 19 years to leave Google. Why was that?

[00:16:57.84] Alice Mansergh: I would say I was definitely moving towards something rather than away from something. I loved my time in Google. I loved working with the advertising team I was working with, so I really wasn't looking. But because of my love of travel around Ireland, back when I was on maternity leave in about 2018, I had noticed a job posting for the board of Fáilte Ireland and I thought that would be a wonderful thing to contribute to because actually there were so many fabulous people in the industry already on that board from a tourism point of view. But my pitch at the time in interview was, what I want to help bring is how do people make the decision to come to Ireland to start with? And that is predominantly now happening online. 80% of people are researching and buying their holidays online, and I'd love to get involved with the board broadly and help particularly with that element. And following an interview process, I was appointed to the board. So that was five years of experience alongside my time in Google, working with the fabulous team at Fáilte Ireland, who of course do the on the ground development of tourism infrastructure and also the domestic marketing. And so then when the role of Tourism Ireland, which is island wide overseas marketing, when that came up, I really felt passionately that I wanted to at least apply in order to potentially contribute both those marketing elements and then some of the tourism knowledge that I'd gained, but I had no expectation whatsoever of being successful. So it was a lovely surprise following a very competitive process to be appointed.

[00:18:34.03] Richard Curran: So you were delighted when you got the job. You go into Tourism Ireland. What was that like, moving from a tech global multinational like Google to an Irish state backed agency?

[00:18:45.52] Alice Mansergh: Do you know less different than you might expect! And I myself puzzle over that. I mean, firstly, wonderful people working at Tourism Ireland. So such a warm welcome. And I will say in the tourism industry overall, you will meet the loveliest people. There's something about people who choose to be in tourism that they tend to be hospitable and kind and have that warm welcome that we're so famous for in spades. So lovely, warm welcome from the people as I joined. And I think Tourism Ireland is about 168 people across 14 different markets, 16 office locations. So we are small enough to still be very innovative and agile. And then equally on the flip side, there were well over 100,000 people working at Google when I left. So that is a civil service in and of itself. And of course there are controls and governance and so on. And all of that was in place at Google and I was well used to working with it. So I haven't found it as different as you might expect.

[00:19:44.34] Richard Curran: One of the big things that you were doing at Google, is it is about advertising. It is about marketing tourism Ireland. It's a very different sector but what you do at its core is market and sell Ireland to potential international visitors. So you would have a huge amount to bring automatically of that kind of tech and data and that kind of experience right away. How important is that?

[00:20:09.84] Alice Mansergh: Thank you, I hope so. That's what I'm aiming to bring. Of course, working with the talented team who are already in place. And there's a phrase that sticks with me that marketing is both an art and a science. So on the one hand, you want to inspire people and nothing sells as well as emotions or really catching at the heartstrings and winning hearts and minds and trips. So that's the art part. But it is also a science. You know, these days, as we said, 80% of people are researching and buying their trips online. And when you choose to show an ad to somebody online, you know, you could be using AI at this point to look at 80 million plus signals related to that person in order to determine are they likely statistically to be interested in coming to my website and researching a trip to Ireland and ultimately buying from an industry partner? And based on those signals, you decide whether you're going to show the ad or not. So that's the world that we're living in, that marketing is both an art where the inspiration and the emotion remains as important as ever, but also a science that you want to use every tool available to you, to make sure you're reaching people at the right time, in the right place to be likely to be successful, and to be very efficient in how you're using marketing spend as well.

[00:21:25.21] Richard Curran: What are the big things, the priorities that you want to achieve?

[00:21:30.19] Alice Mansergh: It's all about increasing the value of overseas tourism to the island of Ireland, because that then supports the economies and communities that thrive through welcoming visitors. And the way we get there is both through inspiring visitors and then also strengthening our partnerships. Because, of course, while it's a privilege and an honour that Tourism Ireland tells the story overseas, ultimately we're not flying the plane. We're not the person on front desk in the hotel. We're not giving the walking tour. And so our partnerships with industry, both on the ground in Ireland and then overseas also in order to bring visitors in, are really important alongside the consumer side. So I guess ultimately I would love to increase the value of overseas tourism for all those that depend on it for a living and do that by inspiring visitors.

[00:22:17.50] Richard Curran: At its core, is that about getting people to stay longer. Take longer trips here while they're here. Spend a bit more money here. Or as well as that, is it about extending the season and looking at bringing people in outside of the summer?

[00:22:30.16] Alice Mansergh: Yeah, those are both really key priorities, because if you think about it, starting with the regional spread last year, for example, hotel occupancy, so how full the hotels were was 88% in summer, but only 73% from October through to May. So if you want to grow, then there's an obvious opportunity there that doesn't require further infrastructure or building, it just requires a better spread of visitors. Also, for the industry, of course, you're going to have rewarding jobs for people in industry if it becomes more of a year-round phenomenon rather than seasonal and on-off. So lots of aspirations to strengthen the seasonal spread. And we're thinking about that within our marketing. For example, very excited about Halloween. I know we feel that the summer is barely done yet, but people will be researching their autumn trips coming into September and we have a brilliant story to tell there. I think everybody's aware of the success of Saint Patrick's Day as a festival where, you know, about 100 million in revenue comes in from overseas visitors visiting. Halloween is actually more celebrated in the US than Saint Patrick's Day is, but not everybody knows that it started on these shores over 2000 years ago.

[00:23:43.77] Richard Curran: So that's a message you want to get across to the American public and say, the home of Halloween. This is where you need to come.

[00:23:51.24] Alice Mansergh: The home of Halloween, is exactly it. That's actually the name of the campaign. So, Richard, you're on the money.

[00:23:56.28] Richard Curran: I should have been on the payroll there.

[00:23:58.05] Alice Mansergh: You should. So it's all about the home of Halloween and showcasing the things that motivate people actually to come to Ireland, which have remained pretty consistent over time. It's about landscape. It's about heritage, and it's about people. And so we'll be marketing 'Home of Halloween'. But really as a hook for why you would want to visit in the autumn season. And it's about finding those hooks for each season that make people decide, well, rather than coming in July necessarily, a portion of them then decide, you know what? I do want to come and see that festival, or I want to see that must see iconic place. So I'm going to come in a slightly different season.

[00:24:37.79] Richard Curran: Where do we pitch ourselves for international visitors? We want to be a quality destination, not necessarily a very low cost, huge numbers destination, but then if you pitch yourself too high, people will say it's just too, it's far too expensive. And you'll often get complaints about hotel pricing, particularly in Dublin during the summer and when big events are on. We seem to be sort of grappling with that.

[00:25:02.69] Alice Mansergh: It is a balancing act. Certainly when we survey consumers overseas, we certainly aren't seen as a low-cost destination. But the good news is we're not seen as the most expensive either. We are middle of the road. So whilst people will immediately think of value or lower cost in places like Italy or Spain, we benchmark well in people's minds actually ahead of places like England or Northern European competitors, Scandinavian countries on cost. So I would say we're in a middle space.

[00:25:33.52] Richard Curran: And is that where you think we should be? Is that where you want us to be?

[00:25:36.19] Alice Mansergh: I take a pragmatic approach where I can't control the costs within the industry, but what I can do is respond and make sure we're attracting the right segments of visitors. So we focus on visitors with what we call value adding tourism traits, so those who behaviourally we know are likely to want to see more, do more, enjoy more, and hence spend more when they're on the island. And the good news, I think for Ireland. Look, you're not going to come here if what you want is a sun beach holiday. But the biggest motivator these days for tourists is wanting a sense of exploration. And that's somewhere where Ireland can play very well. That sense that you want to go overseas, explore something new, do something different, come home feeling like you've had a refreshing experience for mind and body, so to speak.

[00:26:24.33] Richard Curran: We also have this sense in Ireland of our own very rich heritage and culture and history, but lots of things that we kind of don't really market or let other people know about. From watching and observing it, that seems to be happening more now that we're actually investing more in ourselves and in our culture and making something that only a few people maybe were aware of.

[00:26:45.99] Alice Mansergh: Yeah, I think it's important to pause sometimes and feel proud. You know, there are many, many issues, many issues that we all worry about day to day. And that comes from a good place of everybody I think wanting Irish society to be the best that it can be, albeit everyone has different notions of what that looks like. But it is worth just pausing and breathing and taking a look at the things to be proud of and the stories that resonate overseas.

[00:27:12.14] Richard Curran: So what are the kind of things that you're seeing people are doing here and promoting?

[00:27:15.74] Alice Mansergh: Well, this one is fresh in my mind. I got off a train from Kilkenny at about 11 p.m. last night, and I had been in Kilkenny, which is a medieval city, for the official opening of the Red Book of Ossory. And this is a book from 1324, so 700 years old before the printing press, before the potato came to Ireland, before Columbus. It's a very old book, and the significance of it is it's the first written reference to Aqua Vitae or uisce beatha, or whiskey. So distilling on the island of Ireland. And that's a really interesting story, because we now have 28 distilleries island wide who welcome visitors. A quarter of the visitors to them don't even try the whiskey. So it's not about boozy trips or alcohol. It's about the craft, the history and so on. So that's one area of innovation.

[00:28:04.97] Richard Curran: Does that give us one up on the Scots?

[00:28:07.40] Alice Mansergh: It is a reference that is over 100 years before the first reference in Scotland. So it is a good string to our bow when we're talking about whisky and its origins in Ireland. And actually in the 19th century, Ireland was the biggest producer of whisky in the world. But then prohibition came along and now there is this resurgence or innovation in distilleries around the island. There's a trail that you can do. Interestingly, Irish people are less likely to go visit it, but 800,000 overseas visitors come per year. We've seen 20% increase in people searching online for Irish distillery experiences around the world. And again, it's not about booze. It's actually about the history of the craft, the local experiences. And so we're loving that the Red Book of Ossory is now on show in Saint Canice's Cathedral in Kilkenny, because that's a lovely stop along the way for anybody who's interested in that history. And I think, again, talking about the changes in the travel industry, maybe 20 years ago, you had the opportunity to do one big TV ad around the world saying this is what Ireland is. But now, for better or worse, the media landscape is so fragmented, as is consumer behaviour, that we've the opportunity, with about 7 million followers on social, to be posting to our followers on an almost daily basis, with fresh content that can be about hidden gems or lesser-known stories from around the island, and can surface more of those exciting stories on what people might want to see and do. And then when those followers interact with us, when they comment or like what we're posting, that, of course, amplifies outwards to create awareness among people who may not be following us yet. So lots of opportunities across publicity, across social media, across broadcasting to tell more of those incredible stories that we have to be proud of.

[00:29:54.93] Richard Curran: One of the controversial issues that we've seen is about hotel supply and hotels, often in small towns, rather than necessarily in big cities where there are international protection applicants staying, there might be refugees and so forth. And there are a whole set of reasons as to why and how that has happened. But do you think that could have a longer lasting impact on the sector?

[00:30:17.87] Alice Mansergh: Certainly it has been challenging for the sector in places. The good news is the proportion of hotel rooms that have come out of tourism in order to support humanitarian needs, that has levelled off and is even decreasing now. So about 10% of registered hotel or guest house accommodation, according to Fáilte Ireland, is now still in use by humanitarian causes, but that's dropped significantly. I think the challenge really was where you had counties where a substantial proportion. So County Clare, for example, lovely county to visit along the Wild Atlantic Way, but about 25% of their accommodation is offline from a tourism point of view. So, you know, of course we respect the humanitarian causes that drove that model. But we're also thrilled that there's broad acknowledgment within government that there do need to be other solutions as well. And so that's why you're no longer seeing such a wave of more and more and more hotels going offline. And indeed, some are coming back to tourism at this point. I think we're turning a corner on that piece, albeit it's still a very complex situation. And again, what we can do about it from a marketing point of view is back to your earlier point of, well, if we're 88% full within hotels during the summer, but 73% from October to May. Even with today's hotel stock, there is opportunity to grow if you can get the spread.

[00:31:42.98] Richard Curran: Again another issue which isn't really about tourism, but it affects it, is the housing crisis and the housing problems that we have. And then that feeds into a debate about short term lets, about holiday homes and places and locals in small communities being priced out of the market or can't get to live there. How serious an issue do you think that is potentially? And do we have some tough decisions to make about we want, to grow our tourism sector. It's good for the country. It's good for jobs spread around the country. But yes, we do have these housing problems.

[00:32:14.43] Alice Mansergh: It's a great question. And there is short-term letting regulations coming in both at a local level and then also EU regulations coming in. So I think you will see more controls to try and keep the balance right. Because we talked earlier about over tourism and how actually in Ireland nine out of ten people say tourism is good for my community. We don't ever want to lose that. Given people is one of our biggest selling points and our warm welcome. You don't want to get into a situation where in rural communities people are priced out because yes, tourism creates jobs, but the people working in those jobs also need somewhere to live. And so I think a level of regulation coming in is well accepted as a good move forward by everybody in the sense that you can then make decisions on how many units or how much housing should you have to accommodate tourists to support jobs. But how many do you need for local communities so that the people in those jobs have somewhere to live? And it's a balancing act. And of course, tourism should always first and foremost benefit the country, the communities, the people working in it. It can't stand on its own without taking account of the broader ecosystem. Let's say.

[00:33:29.33] Richard Curran: Talking about the ecosystem. Climate change is a big issue in tourism, as many businesses and providers as possible can have sustainable models as to how they do things. But we are an island. Until we have a sustainable replacement for aviation fuel, we want to attract more people to the island and in many cases, apart from ferries. I suppose that means getting on planes.

[00:33:54.29] Alice Mansergh: That's right. Yeah, look, you're right, we're an island and you're going to have to fly, sail or swim to get here. And unsurprisingly, most people choose the first two options. In fact, 90% of people fly to get to the island of Ireland, and there is a carbon footprint that's associated with that. Now, that said, at EU level, the focus is on getting to 70% sustainable aviation fuel by 2050. But there's a lot of development that still needs to happen to ensure that that's viable. So it's a big bet, but it's not a sure bet. But I think that there's a lot that we can do in the meantime. So firstly we do think carefully about where we're targeting our marketing in order to make sure we're getting strong revenue per carbon footprint. So in other words, if you're going to generate carbon by flying somebody in, let's make sure it's the profile of visitor who is going to stay for longer, spend more, enjoy more across the island, and therefore you're getting the maximum economic benefit and making sense of the carbon generated.

[00:34:58.11] Richard Curran: Does that mean you don't necessarily run huge campaigns targeting people on the other side of the world, who might only come for a couple of days anyway? You look at Europe or you look at North America, where it's a good bit away, but they're likely to stay longer.

[00:35:08.91] Alice Mansergh: That's exactly the principle. So in North America, a visitor will stay for eight days. On average, they'll spend €1,400 or more. So even though there's a carbon footprint, when you do look at the revenue per carbon footprint, it still stacks up. We do target emerging markets and overseas markets, but only focused on those highest spending segments. The further away that you go, to again make sure you're making sense of bringing somebody in. And actually when you think of the Dublin airport cap again, it becomes really important until that's resolved, that we're bringing in visitors who will spend more, that you're making sense of every seat on every plane, and you're not bringing in people who perhaps aren't going to stay for very long or aren't going to spend or travel around or enjoy the island. So there's that. But then I will say on the ground, there are so many positive stories. So sustainability is also an opportunity, if you look at the fleet of Shannon Cruisers, they last year moved over to treated vegetable oil as their main fuel, and they've cut their carbon footprint by 90%. So it's been a joy to promote those experiences overseas. The German market particularly, we achieved over a million views on the Shannon cruiser campaign that was focused on slow tourism and this more sustainable model. When you think about the 900km of greenways that we have, there's thousands more in development. I think it can be a real positive for us to encourage more of a slow tourism approach, where people who come for the landscape anyway are then enjoying it by spending time on a bike or walking or on their kayak and getting out in nature.

[00:36:43.16] Richard Curran: Do we get a huge response in terms of views and actual people visiting on the back of the way Ireland is presented in films? Whether it was Star Wars wasn't about Ireland, but it looked fantastic in the shots. Banshees of Inisherin all these kind of success stories, does that really translate into numbers?

[00:37:01.78] Alice Mansergh: It does. I think there is a real soft power or soft draw in Ireland's cultural standing in the world. So when you think about some of our most acclaimed acting talent, our authors, the films that you've referenced think of Game of Thrones, for example, in Northern Ireland. So we leverage off that in our marketing. We have a big focus on screen tourism, where from Star Wars on the Skelligs to Banshees of Inisherin, on Achill and on the West Coast, we tend to go behind the scenes with the acting talent, and we get footage of them talking about what they've most enjoyed in the landscape, and then we run those as campaigns overseas, and you tend to get an even higher engagement rate when you tap into audiences who are already motivated about a film or a piece of content. And so examples this year have been Bodkin, which was set in West Cork. Vikings of Valhalla also, and that was a campaign that we ran where again, over 4 million views of people tuning in to hear what the acting talent in Vikings of Valhalla were saying about the locations that they filmed in. So screen tourism can be of huge benefit. And I think in general, you tend to see a lovely potential overlap between tourism and the arts and culture.

[00:38:15.54] Richard Curran: When you look at the future, Alice is AI, it sounds as if it's going to permeate, maybe even already is through many aspects of our lives. What about in your job and your role? Where do you see the future of AI?

[00:38:27.24] Alice Mansergh: Yeah, I think it already is permeating. So I'll give a couple of examples of where I think it's highly relevant for tourism. So firstly, on the marketing side, it really is standard now on digital platforms that you would be using AI based tools to determine who is the most likely prospect based on signals that are automatically calculated that you should be showing your advertising to. So we're already at Tourism Ireland well, on that journey in working with our digital partners.

[00:38:56.51] Richard Curran: What are the signals? Age profile, where a person is, things they're interested in?

[00:38:59.51] Alice Mansergh: It will all be anonymised data, of course, for user privacy reasons. But supposing that you had just been watching the trailer to Banshees of Inisherin on YouTube. Well, if I'm about to show an ad to you about Ireland somewhere else on the internet, that's a really relevant signal for the system to know, okay, this is somebody who's already engaged with some level of Irish content. So AI will know from just a statistical point of view that's a good prospect to show an ad to. And there's millions of other signals like the ones that you mentioned. That's AI within marketing, talking about AI within tourism. From a visitor point of view, visitors are already using generative AI apps like ChatGPT, for example, or Gemini to ask questions about what they should do on their holidays. And so there was a lovely example when I was in the Mountains of Mourne recently, and I was talking to an adventure tourism provider who said, yep, good season. And actually I'm seeing more Germans this year, which I'm delighted with. And I said, wonderful. Did you ask them how they discovered you? And he said, well, it's the most curious thing. They found me on ChatGPT. So if you haven't tried it, do try it. But its basically people going to ChatGPT and saying, where should I go for a mountain cycling holiday? It could be what should I do on the island of Ireland? And there's pros and cons to this, by the way, because a worry in my mind would be if people were just going to ChatGPT and searching for what should I do in Ireland, because AI just pulls from the most common references on the internet. You could be back in a position where the most common hotspots are the most commonly mentioned.

[00:40:37.54] Richard Curran: And you might be trying to be really innovative and it'll be lost or wasted because it'll just go with whatever is the most popular.

[00:40:43.45] Alice Mansergh: So that's the risk, I think, again, what tourism Ireland and what individual tourism businesses can do to counterbalance that is, the more you have wonderful content on the web explaining all of the hidden gems and the niche things to do, well that gives AI something to pull from. But in the example of The Mountains of Mourne, I think that's a nice case study of clearly the consumer is asking more detailed, more savvy questions. People aren't just saying, what should I do in Ireland necessarily? They may be saying, I want to go to the mountains in May, and I want to be able to cycle and kayak. And where should I go in Ireland? So if consumers are asking more detailed questions, the great thing is AI will give more detailed questions back, but it's certainly one for us to keep our eye on.

[00:41:25.32] Richard Curran: But it's leaving less to chance as well, isn't it?

[00:41:27.84] Alice Mansergh: Yeah.

[00:41:28.35] Richard Curran: Absolutely fascinating. Alice, before you go, there are some questions that I ask all of the guests on this podcast. You could call them the quickfire round of questions and I'll throw them at you. First up, favourite book or film?

[00:41:40.11] Alice Mansergh: Um, I'm loving some of the Irish novelists at the moment. So Sally Rooney, Normal People was great. The Bee Sting, which was Booker nominated last year, was a great read and film wise I really enjoyed An Cailín Ciúin.

[00:41:55.70] Richard Curran: Fantastic. So did I. Who in business or leadership do you most admire?

[00:42:00.98] Alice Mansergh: I feel you can learn from absolutely anybody, be it your intern or somebody working in a hotel. And often the challenge actually is to draw people out so that they share their ideas and thoughts with you. But if I were to go for leadership specifically, I've really enjoyed learning from the tourism experts on the boards of both Fáilte Ireland over five years and now Tourism Ireland. It's fantastic to learn from tourism industry heavyweights in that regard.

[00:42:29.87] Richard Curran: Do you have a mantra in business or in leadership, you find yourself returning to that's helpful?

[00:42:35.45] Alice Mansergh: Yeah, people first is one philosophy I have. I think, be it your team or your customers or your partners. If you can understand what's making people tick and what the trends are. Everything else can follow from that. But perhaps then a counterpoint to that is also that the data matters. So test and iterate. Whatever the hypothesis is, make sure it's grounded in data at scale and that you can test over time.

[00:43:00.82] Richard Curran: When you finish this job, what would you like people to say about what you achieved and how you did it?

[00:43:06.43] Alice Mansergh: Ooh, that's a good one, I think. Told great stories for Ireland and grew the industry.

[00:43:12.61] Richard Curran: Okay. Biggest mistake or regret?

[00:43:15.37] Alice Mansergh: Hmm. I don't have one that I dwell on. I make mistakes all the time, by the way. But I probably regret or dwell on the micro mistakes day by day. But macro, with the distance of time, there's nothing I'd look back on and say, oh, that was a disaster. I'm still beating myself up over it. Yeah.

[00:43:31.87] Richard Curran: You move on and just.

[00:43:33.43] Alice Mansergh: Regret, learn and then move on. Yeah.

[00:43:36.37] Richard Curran: Advice you'd have for someone starting out in a leadership role.

[00:43:40.03] Alice Mansergh: I think back yourself. If you're somebody who suffers from impostor syndrome, you know, just go for it. I certainly would have had lots of anxieties or sense of I'm not good enough or I'll never be able for X, Y, and Z. But, you know, when I've applied myself to things or when I've applied for things, you'd be surprised how often it can work out. So I would say to anybody who also suffers from impostor syndrome, give it a go. Go for it. And what harm? You'll see what happens.

[00:44:10.08] Richard Curran: Check it out and find out. Alice, it's been a pleasure talking to you about your very important role in how we market this country and build tourism all around the country, but also how being CEO of Tourism Ireland has represented a bit of a dream job for you, and it was great to hear about that. The very best of luck to you in the future. Alice Mansergh, thanks for joining us today.

[00:44:28.74] Alice Mansergh: Thank you so much.

[00:44:29.91] Richard Curran: We hope you're enjoying this EY podcast CEO Outlook Series. Remember, you can catch previous interviews we've done with lots of other CEOs. Until the next time, thanks for listening. Bye bye.